


Bad Hair Day

by Ptolemia



Category: Borderlands, Tales from the Borderlands - Fandom
Genre: I NEED VASQUEZ TO BE SAFE AND WELL, and yes i know it doesnt technically exist in the actual plot of borderlands but i dO NOT CARE, anyways this is very very logically unsound fix-it fic, he is JUST HAVING A LITTLE SLEEP, here to put the world to rights with application of New-U technology, i mean this fic is basically pointless because OF COURSE we all know that vasquez is FINE
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-26
Updated: 2015-06-26
Packaged: 2018-04-06 04:49:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4208565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ptolemia/pseuds/Ptolemia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>i am so far into denial about what happened to my poor darling vasquez that it actually physically pains me</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bad Hair Day

**Author's Note:**

> ok so this is probs gonna b multi-chapter and it miiight end up being rhys/vasquez because like. if ur gonna go trash u might as well go all-out trash, that's my motto. ill update the tags if i do get round to writing more. also this is rated t atm for like. bein a bit violent i guess? nothin worse than borderlands is in-game tbh.

Vasquez wakes up feeling as though he's eaten a mouthful of sand. He thinks for a moment that he's in the throes of the worst hangover ever – even worse than the morning after the office party where he'd had a few too many shots on an empty stomach and ended up propositioning Rhys. Loudly. In front of Henderson. While... standing on a table... or maybe it was a chair. Man, that had been a wild night. Well, not a wild night exactly. More of a hugely embarrassing night which he never wants to think about ever again. He opens his eyes, which suddenly are also feeling weirdly sandy. It takes him a moment to realise that this is because he is, in fact, covered in sand, which is now not only in his mouth but also in his eyes.

 

He sits up abruptly, spluttering and blinking violently – partly because of the sand, but also because of the incredibly bright sunlight beaming into his eyes. He rubs his face furiously, squinting into the light and wondering how the hell he got here. He feels groggy, slightly uncoodinated, and he aches all over like he's been taken apart and put back together... again... oh. _Oh_. He stares up at the New-U post next to him. Right. Well. That... probably explains a lot. His mind is frustratingly blank, still a little scrambled from, uh, whatever it is that they do to rebuild a guy with one of those things. Well, he thinks to himself, probably don't want to think too hard about that one, do we, Hugo? He has to agree with himself on that one. He _really_ doesn't want to start thinking about whatever the hell happened to his poor body for him to end up here. At all. It probably involved blood and if there is one thing Vasquez cannot stand, it's... urgh, making him kinda queasy just thinking about it. Ok. Different thoughts. New thoughts. Thoughts about where the hell he is, maybe, would be helpful.

 

He stands, and scans the horizon. Lots of, uh, sand. Looks like a desert. He turns around and scans the horizon behind him as well. He sees a great deal of... more fucking sand.

“Well,” he says, out loud because, fuck it, nobody can hear him and he's gonna talk to himself if he damn well wants to, “Looks like we're in a goddamn desert, Hugo.”

“Hugo,” he says, nodding solemnly, “I concur.”

The momentary joy he gets from having the opportunity to say 'concur' (which is a pretty great word if you ask him) is quickly replaced by a sense of gloom and creeping embarrassment at the fact that he's currently stood in a desert talking to himself like he's some kind of Pandoran crazy, and not a smart Hyperion guy with a bright future ahead of him and a pretty dashing beard, if he does say so himself.

“Ok, no more talking to yourself, Hugo.”

After a moment he mutters “Hugo, I concur.”

 

He chuckles at that, so he's off guard when it suddenly hits him. Why he's here. It hits him like a shot in the fucking chest which is ironic because he got shot. In. The. Fucking. Chest. He saw RIBS, he's pretty sure, before he blacked out, and worst of all he saw a lot – a lot – of blood. Vasquez makes a quiet wailing noise in the back of his throat, and sinks back down into the sand.

 

He throws up. Then he throws up again because even if he hates blood most, vomit is definitely second on the list of bodily fluids that make him feel extremely upset and often also... kinda, well, nauseous. He manages to avoid throwing up the third time for the simple reason that there's nothing left in his stomach, so he just sort of dry heaves pathetically and stands up, stumbling away and wiping his mouth ineffectually with the back of his hand. Urgh. Ok, he can deal. He can deal! Hugo Vasquez is a thirty five year old man with his life together who can absolutely deal! With thinking about the sight of his own blood spraying through the air in front of him! It's ok and everything is just fine. Really. Fine.

 

He starts walking straight ahead, trying to look purposeful. Yeah, he has it all together. Well. Maybe not all of it. Ok, take stock, think it through, that's what he's gotta do. So he got shot, which is bad, but on the plus side his chest is now all back in once piece, and he has blood on the inside of his body rather than the outside. Most of that is good stuff, even if the bad part is that he got shot, which is a pretty damn bad bad part, as bad parts go. Also, his new suit isn't half as nice as the one he was wearing before, which kinda sucks. Oh, sure, it looks similar, but the material just doesn't have the weight to it. Damn shame. Other than that, he has ten million dollars (currently potentially somewhat exploded), a vault key (fake, and broken), another vault key (real, but not actually in his possession at this moment), and and alliance with August. Actually, scratch that last one. August can go fuck himself. What kind of guy lets his mother shoot another guy like that? The kind of guy who is an asshole. Vasquez doesn't need any more goddamn assholes in his life, and he definitely doesn't need to be embarrassed by August's mom in front of all those people. Urgh, he wants to crawl up and die just thinking about it. Well. Not literally. He actually kind of wants the opposite of that, which is why it is just a little concerning that he is, at present, in a desert somewhere on Pandora, with no food, no water, and no idea at all what he should do next.

 

It occurs to him that the only thing he can accurately describe as 'together' in his life is his physical body... which he is admittedly glad to see in one piece again. Still, simply being alive is a pretty low bar to set, and on top of everything else he aches all over. His arm feels a little odd, and he's sure his chest still hurts – and his head feels kinda weird, for some reason. But he's out of ideas about what to do, really, so he stomps on over a sand dune, scowling to himself. He can't stay here forever, that's for sure, but he isn't that keen on the idea of returning to Helios with absolutely shit-all to his name and... actually that's a good point. He has no idea how much he _does_ have to his name right now, given that those New-U things charge, what, seven percent of whatever you have on you? He's not even sure how that works, honestly. It's a rusty pole in the middle of a desert. How the hell does it know how much cash he had on him? He riffles through his pockets, determined to count everything. He digs out a wad of cash – it's not much, by his standards, only a few hundred dollars, but he didn't have all that much money on him in the first place. He's flipping through it, counting carefully, when his eyes alight on his pinky finger. He stares for a minute, then tucks the money back in his pocket and raises his hand up to his eyes. His finger is back. That's...weird. Not exactly unpleasant, but definitely weird. It's been gone for quite a long time now, and in any case his robotic finger was never going to as cool as Rhys' stupid robotic arm. He always felt like he'd been sorta upstaged there, even if Rhys has the ugliest arm ever and Vasquez himself had has - well, had - a very tasteful gold pinky. A gold pinky which, he suddenly realises, was worth quite a bit of money and is no longer in his possession. Probably didn't even count as part of the seven percent that shitty New-U had taken from him. Damn it. He almost considers turning round to go and punch the machine a few times, since there's nobody else here to take out his frustrations on, but it's a long way to walk back now and he probably needs to save his energy until he manages to find whatever counts as civilisation on this disgusting corpse-strewn bandit-ridden rock of a planet. He stares at his finger for a moment longer, wiggling it experimentally. Must be because the New-U digistructing is based on DNA. Puts you back to how your genes would make you, without any... modifications...

 

Vasquez has a moment of horrified revelation which manages, somehow, to be even worse than the one he had in the split second after Vallory pulled the trigger, when he suddenly realised that he was going to die. He raises his hand slowly to his head, hoping against hope that what he has surmised will prove untrue, but when he reaches up to run his hand over his scalp, he feels just that - scalp. No hair.

 

No. Hair.

 

He wants to scream, or cry, or something, but he feels weirdly blank of emotion. He sinks slowly to his knees.

“Shit,” he mutters, “Shit shit SHIT.”

It doesn't really make him feel better. He's not sure anything will. Today has, to put it mildly, not been a very good day.

 


End file.
